Daily Buzz

By Karlene Lukovitz

Kraft Foods’ Oreo and Ritz brands are pushing the pedal to the mat to maximize consumer and retailer benefits from their NASCAR sponsorships — most recently via a sweepstakes to win a trip to a NASCAR race in the fall, take driving lessons in a real race car on a real track, and rub elbows with racers Tony Stewart and Ryan Newman.
Kraft, an official NASCAR sponsor since 2000, announced early this year that in addition to re-upping its official NASCAR cookie/cracker sponsorships for Oreo and Ritz for two years, it had signed with Stewart-Haas Racing to make Oreo and Ritz the official cookie/cracker sponsors of that Sprint Cup Series team.
This year, Kraft’s team sponsorship is off to a strong start, with Stewart winning the Nationwide Series opener at Daytona International Speedway on Feb. 13 (his fifth win of the race in six years), driving the #4 Oreo/Ritz Chevrolet. The race also marked the fourth time in 10 years that a team sponsored primarily by Kraft brands won, according to Michael Tilley, category manager of consumer and customer engagement at Kraft Foods.

By Peter Lauria

Slim Jim maker ConAgra is expected to announce today a multi-million dollar promotional partnership with World Wrestling Entertainment to reintroduce the dried meat snack to consumers after a fatal explosion last summer. The blast, at the only plant in the country that made the beef sticks, halted production and forced the company to pull all its advertising and marketing.
Slim Jim will serve as the presenting sponsor for WrestleMania XXVI in Glendale, AZ, on March 28 — the pay-per-view event typically ranks as the largest audience event of the year for the WWE — and SummerSlam in Los Angeles on Aug. 15.

By Karl Greenberg

Kia Motors America, which recently launched its largest campaign to date to support the 2011 Kia Sorento crossover, is continuing the campaign with a new digital media buy spanning 15 publishing groups through a collaboration with online media site Zinio and its Publisher Advertising Network, ZPAN.
The Irvine, Calif.-based automaker is also the first advertiser on ZPAN, a cross-publisher ad network. Kia’s buy will be across some 45 digital publications in business, men’s lifestyle, news, sports and technology verticals.
Michael Sprague, VP marketing at Kia, said in a statement that the deal with Zinio gives the automaker greater reach and furthers the tagline for the vehicle — “a departure from the expected” — by “exposing the Kia brand to a wide variety of readers across iconic magazine brands.”

By Karl Greenberg

Adidas and the National Basketball Association are hitting the malls. Adidas, which is the league’s official uniform provider, has inked a deal with the NBA and mall-based retailer Champs Sports for an “Official NBA Shop at Champs Sports.” The NBA Shop will debut in 69 Champs Sports stores this month and will be in the remaining 486 Champs Sports stores nationwide by the start of the 2010-11 NBA season, per the companies.
The store will be a dedicated retail space with “adidas NBA” apparel, on-court products, fashion and co-branded accessories.

The ATP announced that Corona Extra had signed a five-and-a-half-year contract to become the main sponsor of the men’s tennis circuit.
In an interview yesterday, ATP World Tour Exec Chair & President Adam Helfant said about two-thirds of the tour’s more than 60 tournaments would use Corona Extra’s logo on their nets by ‘11, with the others choosing to retain their current beer sponsors.
Helfant said Corona, America’s number one beer import, wanted to use the ATP as an international platform to export its brand globally.
Sources pegged the deal’s value as similar to what Mercedes-Benz paid in the last three years of its deal, which expired in ‘08. The value of the Mercedes deal was about $13M annually. That would translate into a value of just over $70M for the ATP.